Various ramblings and musings on gardening, agriculture, food and related subjects.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Bolivia.....

No gardening this post, but instead our impressions of traveling in Bolivia. Which we are truly enjoying. Traveling between places is difficult, as the geography is so extreme, but once somewhere, truly a place to sit back and enjoy - one of the most colourful, idiosyncratic and interesting places we have ever been. With Evo Morales as radical president, there is the feeling of a cultural renaissance.

First impressions are not always good.....

We (Jo and I) get our only sight, and that only a
very brief glimpse, of the Andes, as we land at La Paz. Visiting in
the rainy season means that the scenery remains concealed. The view
is dominated by El Alto, which is actually where most people in the
LP conurbation live – one of those vast third world sprawls. It's
no slum, nor favela, but a proper settlement (1m+) although very
spontaneous in character. Like most third world cities, at ground
level it looks like a version of hell, if hell is somewhere where
no-one has any visual sense. Depressing, especially for a confirmed
believer in progress, that so many traditional poor people's housing
looks attractive, but the reinforced concrete and brick look of
modern poverty not only looks awful, but seems the same the world
over. Except that El Alto actually does look worse – the reason
being that 90% of the buildings look unfinished. As we discover,
unfinished buildings seem to be the curse of Boliva.

As with much of Latin America, murals are very popular and often political.

The drive down into La Paz is
spectacular, but alarming. The core of the city lies some 500m below
El Alto's 4000m, and is like many Spanish colonial cities, a mix of
old and new. The backdrop though is of the newer city, a growth of
(mostly unfinished) brick which spreads up, right up to the lip of
the valley. Blink and you might imagine that this is a Middle
Eastern, or African, city of mud brick. Every surface is covered
apart from a few slopes with the inevitable eucalyptus (more in a
blog about that later) and every now and again the most extraordinary
patch of badlands where building is impossible. It is as if a mad
USAID programme had distributed chunks of some spectacular area of
south-west USA national park around the city, so that the inhabitants
can marvel at the wonders of geology from the windows of their
unfinished houses.

La Paz has its inevitable travellers
area, a barrio of security to which one can retreat. The similarity
with similar places in India and Nepal is so close, shop after shop
selling a similar range of clothes, artworks, textiles, jewellery,
toys, souvenirs, anything remotely 'artisanal'. Most of it is
actually very good, and it is also incredibly colourful. Bolivian
sensibilities rate bright as beautiful and bright pink as most
beautiful of all, so another similarity with India. But, again as
with India, I just wonder at the economics of all this; so many
practically identical shops selling almost identical stuff; ok, it is
the low season, and customers are actually quite thin on the ground,
but even if the streets were heaving with gringo travellers, I find
it hard to believe everyone can make a living. As for the sheer
boredom of running one of these shops, it must be torture. Especially
since it is not in the Bolivian way to do what happens in Rajasthan
and charge out and grab every potential customer. After a couple of
days we discover that various entrances are in fact entrances to
courtyards (mostly of old colonial buildings) each one of which is
home to another 4 or 5 shop – it is like a nightmare of
mall-madness, where every way you go leads to further retail outlets,
all identical.

La Paz is clean, and feels very safe –
in the manner of Spanish-speaking countries, there is a bewildering
array of police (apart from Buenos Aires, where the murder rate has
just gone up dramatically – draw your own conclusions, lovers of
law-and-order and job-creation-policing). Apparently, as part of an
anti-corruption drive, they are not allowed to patrol separately.
Consequently, they hang around in gangs, chatting, ignoring their
surroundings. Then there are the zebra-patrols, who I suspect from
their theatrical behaviour are not police, but perhaps students or
school leavers, but you cannot get any idea, because all you see are
zebra suits, with only a glimpse of a face poking out of the open
mouth. They hang around in a gang around major road crossings, to
ensure safe crossing of pedestrians, with much gesticulating and
waving of black and white flags.

The zebra patrols are an example of
the kind of low cost imaginative attitude to transport issues in
which South American countries are global innovators.

A war memorial which neither forgives nor forgets - the country lost its coast to Chile in c1905.

The buses of LP
are another example. I would guess that 80% of all vehicles on the
road are buses of some kind: micro buses, mini buses and nano buses.
The system is clearly official (each one has a route number), but I
suspect that private enterprise provides everything else. Each one
has its destinations on pieces of card stuck to the inside of the
windscreen, sometimes to the extent of seriously inhibiting driver
visibility, and an assistant (usually someone who should be at
school) shouting the destinations from the side door. It is an
incredibly dense network ('fine-textured' to use the language of
ecology) and appears to do a very good job. It is a squash inside,
but cheap – you pay the driver as you exit. I haven't looked, but I
bet there is an app for the system.

In terms of public services – La Paz
must be the best place we have ever seen for the frequency of public
toilets.

An odd mix of the developed and
developing world, which I suppose, is increasingly typical
World-class museums on streets with third-world holes and
disintegrating pavements. Suited executives brushing shoulders with
peasants. A country whose 'informal economy' (street traders) hides a
large part of its GDP. The figure you inevitably focus on is the
chola women – indigenous or mestizo women who wear that
extraordinary dress: short brightly-coloured, and often satin-look
multi-layer skirts, woolly tights (whatever the weather) fringed
shawls and hats – with about half wearing the bowler hat which the
London gent stopped wearing decades ago. As we discover in one of the
city's excellent museums, this is the look which elite women adopted
in the 1920s. For some reason it was taken up by country women, so
that today it a core part of the culture. Another part of the costume
is the multi-colour square of fabric on the back, which may contain a
baby, shopping and merchandise, a gas canister, or in one case, a
potted rose bush. Many of these women sit all day on the street, with
a small patch of items for sale in front of them, a baby (usually a
grandchild we reckon, and sometimes in a cardboard box) and something
else to keep them busy (knitting, crocheting, or parcelling up more
merchandise). It is the bowler hat which looks so incongruous,
especially as it appears to be perched on top of the head. It often
features a needle and thread tucked into the hat band, sometimes
along with a small knife or other useful tool. When it rains, the
bowler is protected with a black plastic bag.

They look jolly, but the Chola women
are even more reserved than most Bolivians, to the point of being
impassive. Travelling, there are often situations, where the exotic
foreigner buying something ordinary or somehow engaging with people
outside the standard tourist interaction sparks an interest, or
amusement. Not here. It is all absolutely deadpan. In this way, it is
the total opposite of India – not once have we been accosted by
anything like India's “hello, what country you coming from, what is
your good name, how much money you earn”. Jo is frustrated by not
even being able to get the babies to smile.

Stuff to festoon your car with during car blessing ceremonies at Copacobana, in which priests pour champagne over your vehicle (no doubt for a fee).

3 comments:

I'm sitting in an airport waiting for a connecting flight to my daughter's city where we'll celebrate Christmas. I read this piece out of boredom (sorry) but your writing so very vividly describes the kind of traveling I love that for a brief moment I considered changing my ticket to La Paz. Merry Christmas.

Hi Noel, I am sitting here, looking for interesting garden related articles and found your blog post about Bolivia. I'm now diverted and very jealous. 10 years ago, my wife did a 3 week tour of Bolivia, Chile and Peru and keeps trying to get me to book it up again. I looks like another world. I might give in! Scott

Again, your comments on La Paz vs. India are so spot-on. We just came back from a trip to Rajasthan and your few meanings describe the experience perfectly. All the best and may many new adventures come with the new year!

About Me

Garden writer and researcher, lecturer and teacher, based in the England/Wales border region. An occasional designer of plantings for gardens and public spaces.Other interests, and subjects for occasional publication are agriculture, food politics and environmental issues. Chiefly known for promoting naturalistic and sustainable planting design, I am a believer in design and decision-making based on science and evidence – so I have not signed up to organic jihad. And - lot of globe-trotting doesn’t stop me gardening myself either!
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